1&1 is a web host that keeps customer service uncomplicated with round-the-clock email and phone support. Their customers find their service to be generally good. Of course, you can’t expect their representatives to possess the same level of knowledge, but in general, they’re able to provide reasonable assistance.

If you put together an experienced and stable provider, feature-packed web hosting plans, and solid customer support, 1&1 may well be considered as one of the better choices for website hosting.

- – - – - – - – - -

Price and Plans

1&1 has three different web hosting plans with the following monthly fees:
• Starter – free for three months then $4.99/month
• Unlimited – free for three months then $6.99/month
• Business – free for six months then $9.99/month

All of these have a short billing cycle – quarterly or bi-annually – so you need not sign up for a long-term contract.

The monthly website hosting fee is already inclusive of domain registration as opposed to some providers that charge you additional fees for the same service. If you’re operating an e-commerce site, you can upgrade your plan to the Plus package for an additional $10 monthly. The Plus package includes a Shop function and a Product Catalog. These features will online purchasing easier for your customers.

1&1′s Starter plan is a good starting point for small websites, even for those with an e-commerce component. But if you find your online business growing bigger, you should transfer to one of the higher plans for their more advanced features. After all, their Business plan amounts to a mere 33 cents per day.

Guarantee

1&1 implements thorough measures in all of its world-class data centers for high performance and reliability. For instance, the rooms where new equipment are received and stored are climate-controlled to minimize microbes, dust, and chemical vapors that may affect performance. Hence, 1&1 can confidently guarantee an uptime of 99.99%.

Furthermore, all plans with 1&1 come with a 90-day money back guarantee as opposed to most providers that offer only 30 days. If you aren’t fully satisfied with their services, just ask them for a full refund. This money back guarantee makes purchasing easier for customers knowing that there’s a solid guarantee behind the website hosting plans.

Features

1&1 users will get a multitude of nifty features with their hosting plans. For instance, accounts have access to more than 30 web design templates for a quick yet professional look. In addition to this, you’ll get domain privacy so you can protect your online privacy and flexible scripts so you can customize functions. E-commerce sites will also benefit from the shopping cart function, SSL secure server, customer database, and free marketing credits. What’s more is that you may accept PayPal and offline payments to reduce transaction fees and increase sales. Other handy features include a spam filter, website statistics, and up to 200 email accounts that are related to your domain name.

In terms of disk space, 1&1′s Starter web hosting plan provides 50GB, while the other plans supposedly provide unlimited storage. Bandwidth allocation is unlimited so you know that your site’s traffic can be comfortably supported. But while no web host can provide unlimited resources in reality, 1&1 can easily support the average site that consumes around 20MB or less.

The security features are also impressive. Unlike most cheap web hosts, 1&1 owns two out of five of its data centers, while it manages the rest. 1&1 employs rigid security measures such as redundant firewalls in the network rooms to prevent unauthorized intrusion by outsiders and 24/7 network monitoring. Such safety precautions are in place to keep their clients’ data and websites secure. Apart from this, 1&1 also strives to protect the online identity of its users by including Privacy Protection for free from the WHOIS database. As such, confidential information such as your name, phone numbers, business or residential address, and email address will protect you from unwelcome spam, marketing, and identify theft. When you register your domain with 1&1, they will keep your personal information classified by replacing your contact details with theirs.

Support

Technical support via phone and email is available 24/7. Based on feedback by some of their customers, their call response time is pretty slow as it takes them several minutes to pick up. Also, there are a few clients who have said that there were times when 1&1’s technical support representatives weren’t able to provide helpful and correct responses.

Unlike a lot of web hosting providers, 1&1 does not have live chat support as of the moment. However, their two main contact options are complemented by their comprehensive online help center that contains tutorials, FAQS, a searchable knowledgebase, and user forums.

Ease of Use

1&1 provides its accounts with one of the most comprehensive and helpful setup wizards around. Most web hosts provide setup wizards that merely guide you in starting on your site. On the other hand, 1&1 intuitive interface is designed to assist you in site creation from start to finish. While the wizard does not allow drag-and-drop content manipulation, it has one-click editing processes that allow users to instantly place content into position on your website. In addition, uploading of photos is quick and easy and will only take a maximum of three clicks. However, there is no ready gallery of stock photos with 1&1’s Starter plan. If you think that this is a feature that you will heavily depend on for your site’s aesthetics, then it would be wise to upgrade your web hosting plan.

Aside from the web creation wizard, 1&1 also provides up to 125 web design templates that you can customize. Webmasters who have technical knowledge in web design can edit the CSS and HTML codes directly. Furthermore, most of these templates are tailor-fit for a particular industry. Hence, you can already hit the ground running if you’re setting up a website for a specific kind of business or company. If you wish to optimize your site content for search engines, you may insert metatags using 1&1’s builder. The builder also allows users to add different kinds of content to your site like Flash modules, YouTube videos, Google Maps, user forums, live chat modules, forms, and so much more. What’s great about 1&1’s website builder is its high flexibility that distinguishes it from the applications that other web hosts provide to their clients. With just a few clicks, you can completely modify the layout of your site due to its clean and intuitive interface.

The company offers good prices for its hosting plans, but the features that come with it like bandwidth and disk space are lower compared to what other top web hosting providers are offering. Nonetheless, it distinguishes itself from other budget hosting companies by offering support for both Windows and Linux along with programming language support for ASP.NET, Ruby on Rails, Python, Perl, and PHP.

GoDaddy also offers excellent customer service. In fact, it’s one of the few hosts that posts the expected waiting times for phone support so you won’t have to wait for long for nothing.

Finally, the fact that GoDaddy also includes domain registration in its services is convenient. Additional domains will only cost you $1.99 and this makes the company a one-stop shop for your website needs.

- – - – - – - – - -

Price and Plans

GoDaddy offers the following plans with their corresponding monthly fees:
• Economy – $5.99 (available in 3, 12, 24, and 36 months)
• Deluxe – $7.99 (available in 1, 12, 24, and 36 months)
• Ultimate – $14.99 (available in 1, 12, 24, and 36 months)

Like with most web hosts, you’ll get a higher price slash depending on the contract length that you choose. Even though GoDaddy’s pricing structure seems more expensive compared to bargain hosting providers like iPage and FatCow, their prices are more or less the same as other hosting companies like inMotion and HostGator.

If you’re looking to get your feet wet first, then it would be advisable to get their Economy or Deluxe plan since they offer ample features and add-on options to get your website up and running. Once you feel that your website is growing or if you’re looking to have an e-commerce site, then you should choose their Ultimate hosting plan.

On top of those three web hosting plans, GoDaddy a multitude of add-on options that serve to enhance different aspects of your site from design to efficiency and security. A few of the more practical features are SSL, additional email accounts, SEO assistance, and a shopping cart. Because of these add-on features, the purchasing process takes a bit longer with GoDaddy compared to other web hosts since you’ll be required to go through several pages of information about these extras before you reach the final page.

But take note that GoDaddy doesn’t offer a free trial for prospective users to test their services unlike other web hosting companies.

Guarantee

GoDaddy may be one of the few web hosts that don’t openly announce their money back guarantee on their website. However, if you want to cancel your plan, they will give you a prorated refund based on the remaining time in your service contract. Domain registration fees, on the other hand, are not refundable.

The company assures its users of a 99.9% uptime. This is because it has invested in world-class equipment like high-speed routers, firewalls, redundant power systems, offsite data storage, and backups – both daily and weekly.

Features

The company doesn’t offer much when it comes to bandwidth and disk space with their basic Economy plan. Anyway, small websites won’t probably outgrow its 300GB bandwidth and 10GB storage space allocation. But those resources won’t leave much room for ambitious pursuits. You’ll be required to be locked in for three months in the Economy plan, which is about the period that it takes for a website beyond what that plan can offer. Should you wish to upgrade, you can opt for the Deluxe or Ultimate plan that comes with more features for heavier requirements. Supposedly the Ultimate plan offers unlimited disk space and bandwidth, but we all know that no web host can offer unlimited resources. Like other hosting companies, GoDaddy will penalize you should you go consume more resources than what’s expected of an average website.

GoDaddy operates a 30,000-square foot data center equipped with the latest in server security technology and on-site technical and security staff. The company employs safeguards like spam protection, virus protection, and firewalls to prevent any unauthorized access to the server and network. Furthermore, you can opt for a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate for an additional $19.99 per year that provides additional security for online transactions. You’d need this especially if you’re operating an e-commerce website.

Other useful features are free domain-related email accounts. You will get 100 email accounts with their Economy plan, 500 with their Deluxe plan, and 1,000 with their Ultimate plan. You would also get MySQL databases at 1GB each. Apart from these, you will be given as much as $250 worth of Google, Bing/Yahoo!, and Facebook marketing credits.

Support

This website hosting providers makes available a wide range of customer support options that are accessible at any hour of the day. For their phone and email support, the expected response times are indicated in the website so that you can save your precious time instead of waiting for a representative to pick up your call. According to some customers, the response times actually vary and they find that they have to wait more on weekends compared to weekdays. Also, many have said that their support team is friendly, knowledgeable, and patient. What’s surprising about GoDaddy is that they don’t have a live chat support system considering that they are one of the more popular web hosts around.

In addition to phone and email support, they also have an online Help Center that contains a searchable knowledgebase to empower clients to troubleshoot their problems by themselves. This online center also includes a blog that features feedback from customers about the useful free applications to increase site functionality. What is noticeable lacking in GoDaddy’s Help Center is a library of video tutorials that would acquaint users in setting up their website and troubleshooting issues.

Ease of Use

Compared to other website hosting companies, GoDaddy provides a low level of assistance. They do provide users with a setup wizard that will help gather initial information to be included on your website, but after this navigating through the site builder is somewhat difficult. But once you learn the ropes, you’ll find its drag-and-drop feature to be helpful in quickly editing content. To make website design even easier, GoDaddy gives their accounts access to an image library with as many as 8,700 stock images for free. Customers can also use over 1,500 website templates that are customizable. In fact, you may even edit the HTML of the individual content blocks of these templates. To optimize your website for search engines, GoDaddy offers a metatag editor. Finally, you can add different kinds of content to your site from music
and photos to video, forms, and Flash modules.

All of the features above are easy to use once you’ll learn how, but they may sometimes require a lot of patience. For example, some customers have said that they experienced extended waiting times for account-related requests like setting up databases or installing programs. Also, some have experienced some lag while uploading new content on their website. Of course this is frustrating, but any web host’s servers can be overloaded especially when they’re one of the more popular ones with a large customer base.

In terms of control panel, GoDaddy made a recent upgrade to the in-house software that they’re using as an attempt to put it at par with the more popular control panel programs like Plesk and cPanel. Their own control panel offers basic functionality like managing domains, setting up of email accounts, and monitoring of resource usage. While the program does what it’s made for, it’s far from being perfect. Customer complaints indicate that the interface is cluttered and that company advertisements are flashed.

Of course, Mr. Oxley can’t be expected to respond to each and every request for help so the company provides a team of professional support specialists that can be contacted any hour of any day via live chat, phone, email, and a ticket system. An online help center is also available with more than 250 articles, video tutorials, and other documentation that will empower you to better manage your website.

Apart from their customer support, the features that come with HostGator’s plans are also among the best. While their entry-level package is rather scant on resources, the free site building tools that come with it are great.

HostGator’s pricing structure is not the cheapest in the web hosting field but is certainly affordable. That plus the company’s strong commitment to customer assistance, reliability, and excellent service makes them one of the best providers in the market today.

- – - – - – - – - -

Price and Plans

HostGator has three types of web hosting plans with the following costs:
• Hatchling – $7.16/month
• Baby – $7.96/month
• Business – $11.96/month

The monthly fee for each of the plans will be discounted if you sign up for a longer contract. In fact, the Hatchling’s price will be slashed down to $3.96 a month if you get a three-year plan. The Baby’s price will go down to $6.36 a month, while the Business plan’s price will be lowered to $10.36 a month for a three-year contract. The convenience and upfront cost savings of a monthly contract is appealing, but you can save as much as $70 annually by going for their three-year term.

The Hatchling plan is a good option if you’re planning to launch a basic site for its simple features. The two other plans are best for you if you wish to keep your options open and if you’re thinking of expanding your online presence in the future. The main differences between these two plans are the addition of an anonymous FTP, a toll-free phone number, private SLL, and dedicated IP. Take note that the toll-free number is just connected to an existing line and won’t provide you with an additional phone line.

Unlike other web hosts, HostGator charges its accounts with a domain registration fee of $15 even during the first year of the contract. For the Hatchling plan, you’ll be charged a setup fee of $1 if you opt for a 1-month contract.

HostGator accepts American Express, Discover, MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal.

Guarantee

All web hosting accounts with HostGator come with a 45-day money back guarantee. If you’re not satisfied their services for any reason, you may ask for a refund and you will get the full amount minus setup fees, dedicated domain fees, domain name costs, and installation charges for custom software. If you ask for a refund after the first 45 days, you will be given a prorated amount based on the remaining period in your contract.

HostGator also commits to a 99.9% uptime guarantee. In fact, if your site doesn’t meet this in a particular month, your full monthly charge will get refunded. This feature really helps assures HostGator’s customers that the company confidently stands behind their services.

Features

HostGator incorporates an impressive roster of features in its web hosting plans. Based on the type of plan that you’re signing up for, you’ll get free setup, add-on domains, anonymous ftp, site creation tools, private SSL, webmail management program, and dedicated IP. There’s also support for MySQL, streaming audio and video, FrontPage extensions, and programming languages like PHP 5, Ruby on Rails, Perl, and Python.

The company can also cater to the needs of business websites. This can be attributed to HostGator’s lineup of e-commerce-related features like osCommerce, ZenCart, and CubeCart, which are all powerful shopping cart applications that will let you get your online shop up and running at an instant. These also come with an SSL certificate so that online shoppers can be confident that their financial and personal details will be in safe hands.

It is fairly common for website hosting companies to present a few incentives to make their packages more appealing to consumers. HostGator has joined the bandwagon since it has many attractive bonuses that are up for grabs. The most notable perks are the following: more than 52 add-on software for free, over 4,500 website templates, and $100 worth of marketing credits from Google AdWords. All of these handy extras do a great job in enhancing what’s already a great deal.

All of the above features are supported by HostGator’s world-class data centers that are equipped with redundant connections, multiple power supplies, and raised floors. These simply mean reliable uptime and effective protection of your data.

Support

The customer support section of HostGator provides ample contact options and resources. The main support channels are toll-free phone, support ticket system, email, live chat, and an online library of website hosting video tutorials, FAQs and articles.

Their 24/7 phone support is generally good. Clients have said that the waiting times last for no longer than a few minutes. What’s more is that their representatives are friendly and helpful in addressing your concerns. HostGator’s live chat support is also impressive. When users initiate a chat, you will be told how many other users are waiting ahead of you in line and how many chat representatives are online at that moment. You can also wait as long as you like unlike in other web hosting providers where you’ll be timed out. Finally, you can request for a chat transcript that will be sent to your inbox.

If you’d rather look for the answers to your queries in their online help center, HostGator gives you the option to browse their vast collection of FAQs, articles, videos, Flash-based tutorials, and other resources. These are built directly into the cPanel so that you can search for the answers to your questions without going back to HostGator’s support page. All of these documents are searchable so you can look for what you need without having to scan through irrelevant information.

With all of the support options available, it’s evident that HostGator expertly creates a good balance between effective person-to-person contact options and effective help documentation.

Ease of Use

One advantage that HostGator presents over other companies is that they offer a free trial of their site builder and cPanel so that you can gauge whether their services are for you.

The company’s cPanel is designed in such a way that you can immediately spot what you’re searching for in one look. The left part presents helpful information such as site traffic, a place to claim your free Google AdWords marketing credits, and a handy search feature. The main area of the cPanel is also intuitive and organized. It starts with a Special Offers portion that’s not usually offered by other web hosting companies. It is followed by a Links section that provides easy access to customer support. Compared to the cPanels of other companies, HostGator’s cPanel seems more user-friendly.

A dedicated server hosts only your website. You are, in essence, hosting your own website. You have sum control of the bandwidth, space and security of the server. In most cases, the provider will give you the equipment that you need as long as long as you continue to use their service.

You can usually profit a better deal with a dedicated server if you pay annually for the service instead of monthly. Most service providers ask for a monthly fee. Monthly fees for a dedicated server usually run a couple of hundred dollars. If you pay annually, you may be able to save a bit of money.

There is a risk of paying annually, however. If the provider goes out of business and the equipment becomes obsolete, you may be out of luck. If you become depressed with your service provider and their customer service, or the actual server, you may locate yourself stuck with them for a year.

To profit the best dedicated server, you need to shop around. Make certain that you locate a service provider that will give you quality service. If your server goes down, it will be imperative that you can contact someone for help immediately. The longer your service remains down, the more money you lose.

A budget dedicated server provider may offer such handsome incentives such as no begin up costs. In order to gain your website going, you will have to upload it onto the server. Most server providers will charge a fee for this. The fee to get your server going and your website up and running may be substantial. This sometimes puts some people off, but it is a one time fee. Once your business is up and running, you only need to only pay the monthly fee to the service provider.

Although it may be seem prudent to reduce costs as much as possible when starting up your website on a dedicated server, this is one area where you do not desire to sacrifice service for cost. The best dedicated servers are well-behaved, offer excellent customer service and have large bandwidth and space. While you may locate some budget servers that offer a low monthly rate, take a see at the bandwidth and space that they are offering. In some cases, it may not even be as much as what you can receive upon a shared server.

To find the best quality dedicated servers, shop around upon the internet. It may also help to speak to other website owners that you know to find out if they can recommend a provider. Remember that good customer service is as crucial to the maintenance of your business as is the expanded bandwidth and space afforded by a dedicated server.

Another point of distinction of IX Web Hosting from other website hosting companies is the number of guarantees that it offers. It has a 99.9% uptime guarantee, a 30-day money back guarantee, a customer support guarantee, and a prize freeze guarantee. What’s more is that it gives customers a seven-day trial period for its hosting plans.

The company also has its own data centers. Many budget website hosting firms don’t have the resources to operate and maintain their own facility. They usually rent servers from an external party. Having its own data centers equipped with the latest in server health and security monitoring makes IX Web Hosting’s service reliable.

- – - – - – - – - – -

Price and Plans

IX offers three different hosting plans:
• Expert – $4.95 a month for 1 year
• Unlimited Pro – $8.95 a month for 1 year
• Business Plus – $8.95 a month for 1 year

They offer shorter terms of one and three months. Of course, these will cost you more per month. If you sign up for their longer-term plans, you’ll be given a discount. If you renew the three-month Expert plan over a period of two years, you’ll be paying effectively a total of $230. On the other hand, a 24-month contract will only cost you $95 and this translates to savings of up to $135.

Take note that there is a domain registration fee of $10 and setup charges of $30. Both of these will be waived if you sign up for a 12, 24, or 36-month hosting package.

Unlike other web hosting companies that opt to offer one hosting solution, IX presents its customers with several options to choose from. This is actually a good thing if you’re not yet sure as to what features your website require. Also, this will give you the advantage of scalability. You may decide to start small at first without closing any options. Should your website grow in the future, you may move into their Unlimited Pro or Business Plus plan and provide your website more room for expansion.

All of IX’s web hosting plans come with unlimited data transfer, disk space, and hosted domains. Accounts are also provided with 24/7 customer support and a free online website builder. The main differences lie in the number of free customized domain names, number of dedicated IP addresses, and amount of free marketing credits. Considering what you’re getting for such a cheap price, IX Web Hosting offers excellent price value to its customers.

Guarantee

IX Web Hosting guarantees an uptime of 99.9%. This is rare in budget web hosting plans, but IX has done it and is continuing to do it. This is because their data centers run on fault-tolerant systems and have fully redundant facilities. In addition, the data centers receive round-the-clock onsite security and have backup generators and UPS systems in place in case of a power outage.

To protect their clients, IX Web Hosting has a 30-day money back guarantee. This means that you will get a full refund in case you are not satisfied with IX’s services. Furthermore, since the company recognizes that in reality it takes a number of months to determine if a service suits you, IX promises that you can get a prorated refund of monthly fees remaining on your subscription plus a full refund of fees for the current month.

Another guarantee that IX Web Hosting offers is a customer service guarantee that you’ll get a response from them within an hour of submitting a support ticket. If the company fails to respond within that timeframe, you’ll get a prorated refund of the present month’s fees based on how long you waited.

IX Web Hosting also has a price freeze guarantee. This means that once you sign up for an account with them, you won’t have to worry about price increases on your monthly dues.

Features

IX Web Hosting offers three web hosting packages that are loaded with nifty features. As mentioned, a few of the basics are unlimited disk space, bandwidth, and hosted domains. Accounts also get a free site builder and a number of free domain names depending on the plan that you select. This feature is really useful if you need to maintain several websites since you can manage each of them from a centralized location. In addition, the plans come with a certain number of dedicated IP addresses, which will raise your chances of having a higher rank in search engine results. In some web hosts, these basic features are considered add-ons and you may even be charged extra for them.

Another notable feature that IX Web Hosting includes in all of its shared hosting plans are e-commerce capabilities, that’s why it has been so popular with online business for several years already. Each plan comes with a selection of shopping carts. What’s more is that you can install the shopping cart application in one click, which allows you to get your online shop up and running fast. Accounts also get an SSL certificate that’s shared across the entire server to secure all transaction and to give your customers confidence in the online transactions they’re doing with you. If you need a private SSL certificate, you can get one directly from IX Web Hosting.

The good thing about IX Web Hosting is that they give prospective clients a seven-day trial period to test the waters first and see if the company’s plans are really for them. This is on top of the IX’s money back guarantee. You can really see how much leeway the company gives for users to decide whether to sign up for IX’s services.

Support

IX Web Hosting received some negative feedback in the customer support department before. Thankfully, they have improved on that and is currently offers what they call “Super Hero Support.” This is a unique support system in which a particular team and contact person are assigned to a client seeking assistance. This is a more personal approach to technical support and enables all issues to be efficiently resolved. IX Web Hosting’s customer support is available 24/7. Contact options are through phone, live chat, and email.

In addition to direct customer support, IX Web Hosting has a comprehensive online Help Center that is packed with articles, how-to guides, video tutorials, and blogs. Users may even follow the company on Twitter to read about short messages on different web hosting topics.

Ease of Use

IX Web Hosting has chosen H-Sphere as its control panel. This is very similar to leading control panel software like Plesk and cPanel in terms of user-friendliness. The interface essentially has icons that provide users with convenient access to the website management tools. From H-Sphere’s graphical user interface, you may manage domains, create email accounts, and monitor traffic statistics.

They’re a newcomer in the field of web hosting, but it seems that they have already learned the must-have features of hosting plans. Accounts get unlimited bandwidth, disk space, domains, databases, and email accounts. They also get support for popular programming languages such as Ruby on Rails, CGI, PHP, Perl, and MySQL. JustHost also throws in a bunch of practical freebies like a site creation tool, a number of free domains, and shopping cart software.

The only thing that JustHost lags behind in is their customer support, which has received a mix of good and bad reviews. Some have said that it took forever for their calls to pick up. Some, on the other hand, are raving about their lightning-fast response times. This just shows that there are inconsistencies in the quality of their customer support and this is where they must improve in.

- – - – - – - – - -

Price and Plans

JustHost offers two comprehensive plans, one of which is a mere upgrade of the other:
• JustPlan – $4.95 per month for 12 months
• JustPlan Premium – $8.95 per month for 12 months

You may also sign up for their plans for a period of 1, 6, 24, and 36 months. The monthly fee depends on which term you choose. As with other website hosting companies, you’ll be given a discount if you avail of their longer-term plans.

Take note that you will be charged with an account setup fee of $20, but this will be waived if your plan is for six months and above. Domain registration charges of $9.95 will also be waived for contracts 12 months and above. In other words, choosing a shorter-term contract will result in additional fees to compensate for the greater flexibility. To see the cost savings, a 24-month JustPlan will cost you $118.80, while a monthly contract for the same period will cost you almost $245 including setup and domain registration fees. As you can see, you can save over $100 by signing up for a longer contract. Each account comes with an anytime money back guarantee anyway.

JustHost is one of the cheapest web hosting solutions that you can find around. Accounts get unlimited disk space, bandwidth allowance, hosted domains, email accounts, and MySQL databases. There’s also support for programming languages like CGI, Ruby on Rails, PHP, Perl, and MySQL. You also get a free site builder and a number of free domains depending on which plan you sign up for. Customers get all of these exceptional features at an affordable price.

Account upgrades are also reasonably priced. While you’ll be given a number of free domains for free, additional domains after this will only cost you a minimal amount. When registering for an account, some of the upgrades are already checked. These are the following:
• Domain privacy – $9.95 a year
• Daily backup – $19.95 a year
• SiteLock – $12.95 a year

If you don’t uncheck the boxes, you will be automatically billed for those add-on options.

JustHost also seems to have a special promo going on from time to time. If you visit their site at the right time, you can find a fully loaded plan for just under $5 a month. The company’s plans will give you a quick return on your investment since they offer an excellent bargain that’s appropriate during these tough times.

JustHost accepts American Express, MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal. Unfortunately, the web host doesn’t accept Discover or personal checks.

Guarantee

Like a lot of web hosting companies, JustHost offers an anytime money back guarantee to all of its clients. You may cancel your account with them anytime with no questions asked and you’ll get a refunded that’s prorated based on the remainder of your contract. This refund won’t exclude the setup fees that you paid when you signed up as well as domain registration fees. However, you can keep your domain name and transfer it after 60 days. Within those 60 days, you point it elsewhere so you may still access your site.

Features

JustHost’s web hosting plans includes a wide range of features that will cater to the requirements of both beginner and experienced webmasters. With unlimited disk space and bandwidth, their hosting plans are perfect for those who are expecting high web traffic to their sites. The fact that you can also host an unlimited number of domains is useful for those who wish to manage several websites from one central location.

JustHost’s two website hosting plans also gives users e-commerce capabilities. You’ll get a shopping cart software and PayPal support for free. However, take note that accepting credit card payments will cost you extra. Credit card processing, in turn, requires a secure SLL Certificate and a dedicated IP address, which will cost you more extra fees. This is a bit disappointing since other web hosting companies already include these as part of their hosting plans at no additional cost.

The company’s hosting packages also includes comprehensive email options that include webmail, unlimited number of IMAP or POP3 email addresses, and unlimited storage. You’ll also have access to aliases, SMTP email, forwarding, mailing lists, catch-all accounts, auto-responders, and spam protection.

JustHost also gives its clients a free website builder. FrontPage extensions are also supported. Free software applications are also included with their packages. There are blog applications like B2Evolution and WordPress and content management programs like Moodle, Joomla, and Mambo. You also get a choice of bulletin board programs and survey and poll software. In addition, advanced features like customer error pages, cron jobs, and MIME types come with JustHost’s plans.

One look at the long list of features makes it easy to understand why JustHost is popular with a lot of webmasters.

Support

This is one area where JustHost should certainly make some improvements in. The quality of their customer assistance has received a lot of mix reviews. Client feedback range from excellent, with some being satisfied with their team’s responsiveness, to terrible, with some complaining that the service is outsourced and that the representatives are not knowledgeable enough.

JustHost provides its clients with several contact options with phone, live chat, and email being the best way to contact the representatives. If you’d rather help yourself instead of talking directly to the company’s support staff, you may visit their online Help Center for articles, FAQs, and tutorials to know more about website management.

Ease of Use

Like a of other website hosting companies, JustHost uses cPanel as its control panel software. cPanel is currently one of the leading control panels on the market mainly because of its simplicity and user-friendliness. Whether you’re an experienced webmaster or just a beginner, cPanel makes it extremely easy for you to keep up with your website. Anyone can quickly learn how to use cPanel from managing domains to creating new email accounts. cPanel is powerful yet has a short learning curve. This is why it is almost everyone’s first choice.

If you need assistance in getting started or resolving some issues, US-based customer service is available anytime of the day via phone, email, and live chat. Customers have said that the average response times are fairly quick so you can be assured that you’ll get help ASAP.

Considering the features and the support that you’ll be getting with the Essential web hosting plan, iPage must be among the best web hosts in the industry.

- – - – - – - – - -

Price and Plans

iPage has a single plan called the Essential Plan. They’re currently offering a Summer Sale that slashes their plan effectively to $2.95 a month from the $7.95 regular price. Like with their web hosts, you’ll lock in a lower monthly fee if you sign up for there 24 and 36-month contract. It’s good to know that you will be charged a single lump sum fee.

The company doesn’t charge any setup fees regardless of the contract terms that you choose. The plan also includes a free domain name. Just take note that there are extra services that are automatically ticked before checkout. If you don’t uncheck the boxes, you will be billed for them. The add-ons and their charges are as follows:
• Identity theft protection and data security – $12.95 a year
• JumpStart package – $12.95 (one-time)
• Directory listing – $1 a month
• Spam filter – $0.82 a month
• Customer Connection package – $9.95 a year
• Automatic site backup – $12.95 a year

If you look at the actual price of the hosting plans offered by many providers, you’ll find that they are generally affordable. However, what is of question is the actual value they offer to customers. Once you’ve signed up for an account with iPage, you’ll most probably agree that you’re getting the bank for your buck. Their Essential Plan is of exceptional value considering the wide array of features that it includes. It’s already enough for blogs, small business sites, and personal websites. You are given room to grow without shelling out extra. But if you’re looking for higher features, you may purchase add-ons aside from what they’re offering at their registration page. Examples of these are:
• Domain WHOIS privacy – $8.99 a year
• Voice over IP services – $8.95 a month
• SSL certificates – $59.95 a year

Guarantee

iPage has an Anytime Money Back Guarantee policy. If for any reason you’re not satisfied with their services, you will be issues a prorated refund based on the remaining time in your contract. If you cancel your account with the first 30 days, you will get a full refund. This helps to assure the customers that they won’t get locked in a long payment term. If you feel that you need to get out of the agreement, then you can do so anytime you want and not be stuck in a plan that you think is not best suited for your needs.

Take note that if you register a domain directly through the company, you will have to pay a non-refundable fee of $15 upon cancellation of your account. This ensures that you will be able to transfer your domain name to another web hosting provider or just point it somewhere else.

While iPage does not blatantly advertise a 99.9% uptime guarantee, they do boast of their two data centers that are equipped with the latest technology. They have redundant pooled servers that ensure quick loading times and minimize downtimes. This is really important especially if you’re running a site for profit. Any downtime will have a negative effect on your site’s traffic and points and hence its profitability.

Features

iPage’s Essential website hosting plan is chockfull of useful features like unlimited data transfer, disk space, MySQL databases, and domains. These are what makes iPage an appealing web host to many customers since other companies put limits on those features, or offer unlimited features only in their premium plans. Such generous offerings are really attractive to site owners with little startup cash.

Another impressive aspect of iPage’s website hosting plan is the suite of email-related features that come with it. The Essential plan covers webmail, auto-responders, email forwarding, and spam filters. iPage also allows users to check all messages that you get for viruses even before they enter your inbox. What’s more is that there is no limit as to how many domain-related email addresses you can create.

Another enjoyable aspect of iPage’s service is the inclusion of site creation tools. In fact, there are three builders to choose from that can help you create a simple webpage or a complex website with several pages. Also provided for are photo gallery and blog setup wizards that support different content management systems and plug-ins like WordPress, Joomla, Gbook, and Gallery2. If you wish to inject multimedia content into your website, you’ll revel in the fact that iPage supports MIDI, Macromedia Shockwave, Real, and Flash. In terms of programming language support, iPage only supports two, namely SSI and Perl. A lot of users are really hoping that they’ll add more in the future.

Support

iPage boasts of having a responsive customer support team, and based on the feedback of a lot of customers, the company is really living up to that commitment. For direct customer assistance, iPage’s support representatives can be reached via phone, email, and live chat 24/7. Customers have attested that they only had to wait for around two minutes before their calls were picked up. In general, the company’s representatives are friendly and very knowledgeable on the company’s services. In fact, the company’s support staffs are required to undergo an intensive training before they are deployed.

iPage also has a comprehensive online center for those who’d rather troubleshoot on their own. With detailed tutorials on how to use the different features of the Essential Plan, customers will know how to take full advantage of the company’s offerings. If users fail to find what they need in the searchable knowledgebase, they may use the support ticketing system.

Ease of Use

Registering with iPage starts with choosing a domain name. If your choice of name isn’t available, the web hosting company will provide with alternatives to choose from. Once you’ve selected your name, you can choose between an FTP system and a drag-and-drop site editor powered by Weebly to create your website.

Instead of using the more popular cPanel, iPage sticks with vDeck. The said control panel has a user-friendly interface that beginners can easily learn how to navigate. If you’re a more experienced user, vDeck has a button labeled “Features for Geeks” that when clicked, reveals a list of advanced features.

Second, iPower offers several customer support options including 24/7 phone, live chat, and email. If you prefer to help yourself and read about managing a website, you may access the company’s online help center. The said center contains hundreds of how-to articles and an extensive knowledgebase that you can browse if you have questions.

Finally, iPower has a 30-day money back guarantee so you can be assured of a full refund if you’re dissatisfied with their services for any reason. All of the above, combined with iPower’s years of experience in the hosting industry, are a reliable proposition.

- – - – - – - – - – -

Price and Plans

In the realm of budget website hosting, iPower is a provider that has something in store for everyone. It offers three different plans:
• Starter – $3.95 a month for 1 year
• Pro – $5.95 a month for 1 year
• Pro Plus – $12.95 a month for 1 year

Like with any other website hosting company, iPower’s plans are cheaper if you sign up for a longer-term contract. If you register for a three or a six-month agreement, you will certainly have to pay a little more.

When you’re starting small, it is advisable to get their Starter plan. However, when you feel that your website is starting to outgrow it, you may transfer to their Pro plan, which won’t come at a substantial extra monthly cost. This plan has additional features and also removes the cap that iPower places on others. The Pro Plus plan, on the other hand, is the most expensive since it further expands the Pro plan’s features with the inclusion of e-commerce capabilities.

The downside to their Starter plan is that you would be charged with a $10 setup fee. Charging of setup fees for shared server hosting plans is a practice that is unusual these days, so you would be better off with some other basic plan from another provider that would provide this service for free.

Guarantee

All iPower website hosting accounts are backed up by the company’s 30-day money back guarantee. This means that no more than 30 days after signing up for an account with iPower, you can ask for a refund for any reason. The company won’t ask you for any explanation as to why you’re cancelling your account with them. This feature will encourage prospective customers to test iPower’s web hosting services without the fear of losing money should they get dissatisfied or find the plan they sign up for isn’t suitable for their needs.

If you visit their official page, iPower doesn’t seem to have an uptime guarantee of sorts. It’s because it is not prominently displayed in their site. However, many customers have attested that iPower can deliver an uptime of 99.9%. This simply means that during a single day, your website may be offline for only 9 seconds. To ensure stability and reliability of its services, iPower maintains data centers that are equipped with the latest servers, routers, and firewalls. In case of power shortage, unauthorized system access or data loss, backup generators, a multi-layered security system, and cooling systems are in place. iPower also employs 24/7 onsite technical staff and security entrances for enhanced protection of customers’ data.

Features

iPower’s Starter plan is the only one that has a cap on disk space and bandwidth. In addition, the number of domains and MySQL databases is limited to one. As you upgrade your plan, the features included will also increase. The Pro and Pro Plus plans include unlimited disk space and data transfers. They also come with POP3 email accounts, more website design templates, and e-commerce capabilities.

iPower plans also come with a free script library that includes the ones that are needed by most webmasters. Some of these are scripts for phpBB, WordPress, X7 Chat, and GBook. iPower also has support for programming languages like CGI-BIN, Perl, PHP, MySQL, and Server Side.

When it comes to site creation tools, iPage isn’t as generous as other web hosting companies. The Starter and Pro plans come with a builder that can only create up to 9 pages using 100 web design templates. Pro Plus accounts, on the other hand, have access to iPage’s premium website creator that can make an unlimited number of pages using as many as 220 design templates.

iPower includes additional features that other website hosting providers don’t have like support for bulletin board, guest books, user forums, blogs, poll, and even Java plug-ins.

In terms of security features, iPower doesn’t lag behind the competition. It boasts of four data centers with onsite security guards and CCTV camera systems in and out of the building for total protection. Network monitoring, routing, and intrusion detection are ensured by the use of NOCs with the content mirrored in others for system redundancy. There are also several backup systems in place like generators should the power at the data centers go out. There are also environment controls in place.

Support

Like other web hosting firms, iPower provides direct technical support to its customers via phone, email, and live chat. According to some customer reviews, the response times of these support channels are pretty slow compared to those from other hosting companies. Also, since their support team is not US-based, some users experience language barriers when they are calling for assistance.

Apart from the contact options mentioned above, you can visit their online center. Here, there is a knowledgebase that you can browse by topic. When you click on the links, you’ll be directed to articles that will explain to you how to go about certain things like adding new email accounts, using iPower’s e-commerce features, and marketing your website online. There are also step-by-step tutorials that would guide you in resolving your site issues.

Ease of Use

iPower uses the popular vDeck control panel as the default control panel for its users. Like cPanel, vDeck is extremely easy to navigate and to use. With it, you can manage domains, databases, email accounts, web statistics, and the shopping cart. vDeck has a clean and intuitive interface that won’t confuse even those without much experience. The said control panel is known for its versatility and user-friendliness that even other website hosting companies use it. The best part is that vDeck is made by iPower itself so the company can quickly improve it, tweak it, and fix bugs at a rate that’s faster than any other web hosting company could.

As mentioned above, iPower lags behind other competitors in terms of support for site creation. What’s include in their Starter and Pro plans have limits. Unlike other web hosting companies, there isn’t much support when it comes to site creation, design, and launching.

The features that are included with MyHosting.com’s web hosting packages are the standard. You get unlimited bandwidth, disk space, and domains. You also get a handful of freebies like a site builder, spam protection, and e-commerce tools. If you compare their offering with other companies that have the same pricing structure, you will probably notice that what they have isn’t as powerful as what others do. This is one area where MyHosting.com can certainly improve on. But what’s notable about the company is that it confidently stands behind the quality of its services. The fact that it guarantees network and server uptime of 100% is remarkable.

MyHosting.com will certainly rise through so users should definitely take a chance and sign up for one of their web hosting plans.

- – - – - – - – - – -

Price and Plans

MyHosting.com offers three web hosting plans:
• Personal Website – $4.95 per month for 12 months
• Business Hosting – $9.95 per month for 12 months
• eCommerce Hosting – $18.95 per month for 12 months

The figures indicated above are promotional prices. MyHosting.com always has some sort of promo going on so if you visit their site and sign up at the right time you will get discounted rates. Also, the longer the term of the contract you choose, the lower the monthly web hosting fee that you’d have to pay. As such, it would be better if you go for a longer contract especially if you think that you’d just end up renewing your short contract anyway.

When signing up, you’ll first be asked to choose which of the three plans above you want. After that, you’d be asked to configure your plan by choosing from the list of available add-ons below:
• Website restore – $2.45 per month
• Mobile email – free trial for 30 days, $5.45 per month after the trial period
• 10 more mailboxes – $5 per month
• Web design/online marketing services
Take note that the first two add-ons are already checked by default so your total bill will include them if you fail to uncheck their corresponding boxes. There are no setup fees but there is a domain registration fee of $14.95.

As far as the web hosting plans are concerned, each contains different features and, of course, different prices. Luckily, the price difference between the Personal Website and Business Hosting plan is not substantial so it won’t hurt your pocket should you decide. Besides, their lowest plan is stuffed with enough features to satisfy the requirements of most websites. You’ll get unlimited data transfer, disk space, and domain hosting. Free MySQL databases, SSL certificate, Basic Exchange Email mailboxes, site builder, e-commerce add-ons, and marketing credits are also included in the packages. And the higher the plan that you sign up for, the more resources you get.

Guarantee

All of MyHosting.com’s website hosting packages are bundled with a 30-day money back guarantee, which is the standard for hosting services. If you are not completely happy with the company’s services, you may send them an email explaining your concerns within 30 days of account activation. After this, you’ll receive a full refund for web hosting fees. This refund only applies to website hosting fees. It doesn’t include additional charges like disk space overusage, domain name registration, and additional bandwidth fees.

Unlike the big players in the web hosting field with an anytime money back guarantee, MyHosting.com won’t issue a refund past the 30-day period. Also, if you’ve been a customer of MyHosting.com for 90 days already, you aren’t eligible for the company’s money back guarantee.

MyHosting.com also offers an uptime guarantee of 100% network and server uptime. In effect, you’ll be refunded an amount up to one full day of service credit if you encounter 1 hour of service interruption. The company is so confident about its web hosting services since it has state-of-the-art Earthlink and Equinix data centers that are armed with the latest in network and physical security measures in an environment that’s fully redundant. As such, you can be sure of MyHosting.com’s reliability and quick loading time.

Features

The assortment of web hosting features that are included in Myosting.com plans are enough to make your site building and launching experience easy. It offers a few free tools like an assortment of site building with customizable web design templates and support for applications like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Gallery2, phpBB, MediaWiki, and so much more. The e-commerce capabilities that come with their website hosting plans are also useful and you get a range of shopping carts and SLL certificates.

As mentioned above, all accounts get unlimited bandwidth and disk space. They’re also entitled to unlimited domain hosting. This allows you to manage several domains from a centralized point and with one account and results in tremendous cost savings.

MyHosting.com accounts also get a free Google anti-spam program. With this, you can securely access your emails without risking a virus attack. Using their knowledge in viruses and spam sources, MyHosting.com is able to identify and quarantine infected mail and prevent your inbox from getting that mail. At this same time, the web hosting company employs high-tech methods to allow better management of your emails so that you won’t miss out on important messages.

MyHosting.com is not as popular as other website hosting companies primarily due to the features it has in its plans. The issue does not lie in the amount of features that it has packed into its hosting plans. Instead, the features pale in comparison compared to what other providers offer in terms of power and functionality. However, if the company simply beefs up their offerings, more customers will certainly flock to them.

Support

As with other web hosts, MyHosting.com offers several customer support channels such as live chat, phone, and email. All of these are available round-the-clock at any day. According to some customer feedback, their support team is prompt, responsive, and friendly. In fact, response times generally don’t take longer than two minutes. Hence, you can expect that your concerns will be answered right away. When it comes to email, customers have said that they would usually be emailed back with detailed answers within 24 hours.

Aside from their direct customer support channels, MyHosting.com also has an online help center and community. Here, you can access their knowledgebase, FAQs, forums, and blogs. They also have an Ideas section wherein you can submit your suggestions on what product to add and how to improve their services.

Ease of Use

Most webmasters are already familiar with cPanel and get turned off when a web hosting company is using another control panel. However, the control panel that MyHosting.com, Parallels, provides to its accounts is similarly user-friendly and also has a short learning curve. The web-based application gives its users quick access to convenient tools that will help them manage their hosting accounts. With its clean interface, you can easily tweak your email accounts, manage your domains and billing, and monitor web statistics. While cPanel still remains the preferred control panel, users should give Parallels a try for its ease of use.

The website hosting company also provides a wide selection of scripts and applications. With the help of these, you can build your e-commerce website for your business, start a blog, build user forums, conduct surveys and polls, and so much more.

Aside from their useful features, what makes HostMonster popular is their excellent customer support. Customer feedbacks are generally positive and indicate that HostMonster’s representatives are prompt, friendly, and knowledgeable.

Overall, HostMonster provides value for your money plus reliable services.

- – - – - – - – - -

Price and Plans

HostMonster is one of those web hosts that consolidated their services into one easy-to-understand package. Price varies with contract duration and is as follows:
• 12 months – $6.95 per month
• 24 months – $5.95 per month
• 36 months – $5.95 per month

There are no setup fees and you’ll get primary domain name registration for free for any contract length. This simply means that even if you purchase a shorter contract, you’ll still get all the perks that come with a long-term agreement. This is a quite refreshing change from the usual setup wherein shorter-term contracts are charged with these non-refundable fees. In addition, there aren’t any cancellation fees so you can cancel your account anytime should you change your mind.

Take note that add-on features like SiteLock Domain Security, Site Backup Pro, and Domain WHOIS privacy protection are already ticked by default and would cost you an additional $12.95, $12.95, and $9.95 per year respectively if you don’t uncheck the boxes. Other website hosting companies will charge you up to $8.99 per year for the same service, so this makes HostMonster’s price very reasonable compared to them.

What’s good about HostMonster is that they jam-packed a lot of features into their one hosting plan without raising its price. Some of these notable features are unlimited data transfer, disk space, email auto-responders, add-on domains, and subdomains. The right combination of useful features is in one plan that is priced at an amount perfect for those with limited startup funds. The overall perception is that HostMonster gives its customers exceptional price value since it offers them so much for so little. For years already, the company has been consistent with its pricing structure, which usually falls around $6 to $7 a month. Of course, you’ll have to sign up for the longer-term agreement to get the best value, but HostMonster’s hosting plan will still provide you with a bang for your buck no matter which contract length you choose.

HostMonster accepts payments via American Express, Diner’s, MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal. They don’t accept personal checks.

Guarantee

Even though the minimum contract duration with HostMonster is 12 months, the company says that you will never be obligated to finish the entire contract. If for any reason you are dissatisfied with their service, you may cancel your account any time. By doing so, you will receive a refund that will be prorated based on the remainder of your contract length. Take note that cancellation of your account after three days will result in a $10 domain name charge. However, if you cancel your account within 30 days, you will get a full refund less the $10 fee. The company won’t charge users for domain name transfer if they cancel the service so long as the domain name is still registered.

What’s impressive about HostMonster is that they require customers to complete a questionnaire when cancelling their account. They have to confirm that all of the data and information have been backed up already since once the account is cancelled, they wouldn’t be able to access any of these. Unlike other web hosts who don’t have such a policy, HostMonster goes out of its way to show their concern to their clients, even to those who have decided to terminate their contract with them.

In terms of reliability, HostMonster guarantees an uptime of 99.9%. It can confidently do so because it has the latest quad processor servers for optimal website loading time and performance. It also implements a variety of protection mechanisms in its data centers like 24/7 network monitoring and backup generators to ensure that your site is online all the time.

Features

HostMonster crams a ton of handy features in their hosting plan. All accounts are supplied with a user-friendly website builder, a complete set of webmail management tools, and the ability to create as many FTP accounts as possible for all your file sharing needs. HostMonster’s FTP capability is secure so there’s no need to worry about external parties having unauthorized access to your data and files. Other features include multimedia support for audio and video streaming, MIDI files, and the capability to make your own MIME types.

Most web hosting companies nowadays bundle their hosting plans with a lot of free applications. HostMonster is among these companies and includes in its package some of the favorites in the web industry. Your hosting plan comes with popular applications such as WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla for content management as well as a roster of image gallery applications like Coppermine. It also includes shopping carts like osCommerce and Agora that will allow you to quickly and easily setup your online store. If you’re looking to be big in the online world, HostMonster will give you the right resources to equip you for such an ambitious task.

HostMonster’s web hosting plan includes standard features like unlimited disk space and bandwidth. Again, we know that no web host can afford infinite resources but HostMonster can comfortably support the needs of the average website.

Support

One of the reasons why HostMonster has become so popular among webmasters is because of its dedication to provide superb customer support. Unlike other companies that limit their technical support to particular hours or days, or worse, charge you for one-on-one support, HostMonster delivers customer support for free any time of the day. Whether you encounter issues on a holiday or on a weekend night, you can be assured that someone will handle your concern via phone or live chat. You may also send a support ticket or visit their organized online help center for video tutorials, FAQs, articles, and other resources that will help you troubleshoot your issues on your own.

It’s a bit odd that HostMonster does not offer email support unlike the majority of web hosting providers, but the fact the response times for their phone and live chat support are generally less than two minutes already makes up for this.

Ease of Use

HostMonster provides cPanel as the control panel for their users. While this is a website hosting industry favorite and one of the easiest to use, HostMonster’s version lacks certain features that other companies include in their cPanel. For instance, they didn’t include an easy access to their live chat feature so this makes it hard for users to have a quick chat with their support team when needed.

Users who are not yet familiar with cPanel will find it comforting that HostMonster offers a free trial so that you can see for yourself if it’s enough for your needs. Those who haven’t tried other cPanels will most probably find HostMonster’s version to be adequate. Those who have, however, will perhaps find it odd that HostMonster placed their Partners and Promotions portions at the top whereas it would have been better if they put more functional sections there instead.